I just typed all this on Facebook, and it's long enough I hate to waste it. Plus, it took some math to produce, and I don't like math. So here it is. First the link to the article that provoked me:
http://www.kjonline.com/news/Ten_people_face_drug_charges_following_Augusta_raid_.html
And what I wrote:
It took 12 years for this kind of news to catch up to me after moving from Arizona, where it is standard fare. I don't want Maine to go down the same expensive, hopeless, dangerous road. This article mentions Chicago gangs, which are documented to be connected to Mexican drug cartels, and the product is heroin, most of which is produced in Afghanistan. If drugs were decriminalized and regulated, the black market profits would not exist that bring such people to Maine and cause them to fight to the death and endanger police officers and all of us to protect their money and avoid apprehension. Two excerpts - "The gangs are drawn to Maine by its rural makeup and its drug-hungry populace" and "'They’ve set up business and it’s a good business, unfortunately,' Clark said" - explain it all. The drug issue is about money, not drugs. The banned product could be anything. High-flow showerheads (a la Seinfeld), R-12 refrigerant (as was once smuggled), alcohol (as in Prohibition 1.0). Except the addiction factor for those is not so high. The only way to kill the violence and mayhem and foreign intervention and multi-national criminal syndicates is decriminalization. Here's tonight's math. The article says they seized 45 grams of heroin; the street value is $10,000; 1 ounce is 28.3 grams; so heroin is worth $6289 per ounce; 1 ounce of gold is currently worth a mere $1194; thus heroin is more than 5 times as valuable as gold; heroin is a renewable resource, made from opium, made from poppies; gold, despite the efforts of alchemists, cannot be grown or made; gold is precious because of limited supplies (and it's pretty); heroin is only this expensive because we have chosen to ban it, making it a high risk product shipped under complex, threatening, dangerous conditions across the globe to addicts who indeed value it more than gold and possibly more than their own lives.
http://www.kjonline.com/news/Ten_people_face_drug_charges_following_Augusta_raid_.html
And what I wrote:
It took 12 years for this kind of news to catch up to me after moving from Arizona, where it is standard fare. I don't want Maine to go down the same expensive, hopeless, dangerous road. This article mentions Chicago gangs, which are documented to be connected to Mexican drug cartels, and the product is heroin, most of which is produced in Afghanistan. If drugs were decriminalized and regulated, the black market profits would not exist that bring such people to Maine and cause them to fight to the death and endanger police officers and all of us to protect their money and avoid apprehension. Two excerpts - "The gangs are drawn to Maine by its rural makeup and its drug-hungry populace" and "'They’ve set up business and it’s a good business, unfortunately,' Clark said" - explain it all. The drug issue is about money, not drugs. The banned product could be anything. High-flow showerheads (a la Seinfeld), R-12 refrigerant (as was once smuggled), alcohol (as in Prohibition 1.0). Except the addiction factor for those is not so high. The only way to kill the violence and mayhem and foreign intervention and multi-national criminal syndicates is decriminalization. Here's tonight's math. The article says they seized 45 grams of heroin; the street value is $10,000; 1 ounce is 28.3 grams; so heroin is worth $6289 per ounce; 1 ounce of gold is currently worth a mere $1194; thus heroin is more than 5 times as valuable as gold; heroin is a renewable resource, made from opium, made from poppies; gold, despite the efforts of alchemists, cannot be grown or made; gold is precious because of limited supplies (and it's pretty); heroin is only this expensive because we have chosen to ban it, making it a high risk product shipped under complex, threatening, dangerous conditions across the globe to addicts who indeed value it more than gold and possibly more than their own lives.
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